2004 was an eventful year remembered in Bangladesh for the gruesome grenade attack on the Awami League chief Sheikh Hasina. This one incident, according to many, has taken the longstanding animosity between the two major parties to a new height where any negotiation seems to be a far cry as the Awami League accused the BNP top brass of the attack while the BNP has always denied any involvement with it.
Eleven years later, that atrocity remains shrouded in mystery. Of those 11 years, the Awami League has called the shots for about seven while the BNP has been out of power for nine. Evidently, militancy associated with a perverted interpretation of religion has continued to gain strength under the current AL regime.
An often-overlooked fact is that calibrated violence to intimidate political/religious opponents started well before Khaleda Zia’s third stint that started in 2001. Since bomb explosion at the Jessore Udichi concert in 1999, the country has witnessed a steady rise in militant Islamism. During these years mainly, two official narratives under two regimes arose. The BNP, due to its political proximity with Islamist politics, firstly denied the existence of violent Islamism in the country rather amateurishly; and when such disowning was indefensible, it tried to be in the good office of the west by denying any involvement with terrorist organisations.
Geopolitical realities of the post-9/11 Bush era forced it to find the real perpetrators because the only clarification, according to it, that would hold water for the narrative was to find the culprit, deny any involvement and punish them swiftly. Under the AL regime, the government instruction has been quite an uncomplicated one. No matter who the perpetrator is, blame it on the BNP and on its Islamist allies — as treating victims of religious terrorism as political currency is, indeed, advantageous for its line of politics.
Such irresponsible politics of blaming without investigation has made the culprits confident and has given rise to brazen acts of murders in daylight. It is, therefore, essential to consider some specific facts to separate the fiction from the politicised narrative.
Mufti Hannan, leader of the militant group Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami and the prime suspect of the Sheikh Hasina murder attempt, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2003 in absentia and arrested by the BNP government in 2005.1 Hannan preached his violent doctrine throughout the 1990s and was allocated with a sizeable piece of land for a soap factory by the state-run Gopalganj BSCIC in 1997.2 Apparently, this resource placed at the heart of Awami vote bank and allocated during the AL regime would later enable his pursuit.
The BNP is rightly blamed for the failure of government to provide security before the horrific attacks; neither can it avoid the responsibility for protecting the citizens. However, post the attacks, the government took zero tolerance on terrorism with the Rapid Action Battalion successfully uprooting the kingpin.3 What is undeniable is that the law enforcement agencies were actually after the criminals, not after the political opponents. Let us not forget that the BNP was in power when the arms haul was busted. If it was its deal, how did the police end up sniffing it out? Are the police not meant to be tame lapdogs of whoever is in power?
Other organisations that used terror to establish Islamic caliphate were the Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh and the Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh. Both the JMB and the JMJB were formed in 1998. The notorious JMB leader Shaykh Abdur Rahman established his organisation in the constituency of his brother-in-law, a ruling Awami League lawmaker, who subsequently became state minister of the ruling government.
New evidence and clues found by the National Investigation Agency of India says that leaders of the militant outfits of Bangladesh established a branch in West Bengal in 1999, which was used as a back office during the terror attacks conducted in Bangladesh by the JMB from 2002 to 2005.4 However, the top brass of the JMB and the JMJB eventually met their fate after the BNP government arrested them in 2005. The US ambassador, after the detention of the top militant commanders in Bangladesh commented that the backbone of militancy in Bangladesh was apparently broken.
Let us not forget, it was absolutely not in the BNP’s interest for terror to grow when they were in power with the Jamaat-e-Islami.
This is 2015. Law and order, in general has worsened to degree where ‘plain murders’ often fail to make noticeable newspaper space.
After the brutal killing of Avijit Roy early this year, meters away from the police, the killers fled the scene, never to be captured. Since then, there has been four gruesome killings; the list extending to include the most recent victim, Faisal Arefin, a publisher hacked and left to bleed to death in his own office. There has been no meaningful attempt by the government, no significant progress by the investigators as the ruling party seems only interested in commodifying the deaths, using them as ammunition to imprison political opponents.
The killing of the two foreigners, one of them in the most secure diplomatic neighborhood of Dhaka, triggered a widespread panic among the citizens. Instead of impartial, apolitical investigation to ensure that real criminals behind the Tavella murder are brought to justice, the subsequent arrests of the suspects with reports of their abduction and confession under torture only aids to the mystery.5,6,7 In similar fashion, after 25 days of continuous remand, the prime suspect of Kunio Hoshi murder came up with a name — not surprisingly a BNP leader, conveniently fitting to the narrative espoused by prime minister Sheikh Hasina, which she made public without any shred of evidence. When the script is dictated from the highest offices, the outcome of the investigation is of no surprise.
These facts are enough to draw a conclusion that both parties failed consistently from 1998 till date to tackle terrorism in Bangladesh. The difference is the BNP, being democratically elected and harbouring a concern to win the office again — democratically — were accountable at least to some extent to the citizens, which forced them to respond. Consequently there was some form of security, be it temporary. Contrary to popular belief, the BNP record of dealing with the terror threat when it was in office was actually very good. It is not fair to say they allowed the threat to grow unchecked; in fact the opposite is true. There is no persuasive evidence that the BNP ever sheltered or sponsored terrorism. The only evidence against the BNP is coerced testimony probably under torture. While the BNP was able provide some form of security, the Awami League seems only interested in securing their absolute grip on power, at the cost of the security of the people.
Extremism breeds extremism. By establishing a culture of impunity, an environment of zero accountability, where might is the only right, and power is established by holding the nation hostage — the rulers have set forth a convincing message: In Bangladesh, there is no space for moderates. Be it political or religious. The killings by the religious extremists is only an echo of that message.
Endnotes
1 http://bdnews24.com/bangladesh/2005/09/30/mufti-hannan-arrested-1st-ld
2 http://archive.thedailystar.net/2005/10/04/d51004011810.htm
3 http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1179421,00.html
4 http://www.hindustantimes.com/india/bangladesh-terrorist-came-to-bengal-in-2005-to-set-up-jmb-network/story-W0ux9PDoTXb4YyF07q4ImJ.html
5 http://newagebd.net/170894/tavella-murder-four-suspects-detained-weeks-earlier-than-police-claim/
6 http://newagebd.net/172647/tavella-murder-quayums-brother-missing-after-abduction/
7 http://newagebd.net/174444/tavella-murder-i-was-threatened-with-crossfire-accused-tells-family/
AKM Wahiduzzaman is a former assistant professor of geography and environment at National University, Gazipur.
